Helical french fries, or curlicue fries as they are more commonly known, have long been popular fare at carnivals, state fairs and restaurants. In addition to their engaging appearance to consumers, helical fries offer an important marketing benefit to their purveyors: good "plate coverage." Plate coverage refers to the apparent volume of food received by a customer for a given cost. Since a serving of curlicue fries inherently includes a large volume of air, it appears larger than a like weight of conventional french fries. For example, the plate coverage provided by four ounces of conventional fries may require only three ounces of helical fries. This differential can be translated into higher profit margins for the retailer or can be passed on as more generous servings to the consumers.
Apparatuses suitable for making strips for curlicue french fries have been known for decades. The prior art shows two general classes. In the first, the potato is rotated and brought into engagement with a non-rotating cutting element. U.S. Pat. No. 3,874,259 to Chambos illustrates such a system that employs an electric drill to rotate the potato. As a general proposition, this class of devices is poorly suited for use in large food processing operations due to the difficulty of repeatedly gripping, rotating and cutting large numbers of potatoes seriatim.
Better suited for large commercial applications is the second class of helical cutting devices. In this class, the cutting element is rotated and brought into engagement with a non-rotating potato. An exemplary apparatus is shown in French patent No. 1,554,003. The problem with many devices of this class, however, is that the means employed to hold the potato against rotation while it is being cut cannot rapidly be released to permit the processing of the next potato.
One proposed solution to this problem is shown in U.S. Pat. No. 4,644,838 to Samson et al. and involves the use of a plurality of spring loaded fingers which protrude through the wall of a feed chute supplying potatoes to the cutting element and which act to restrain the potatoes therein against rotation. A reciprocating plunger pushes potatoes through the chute. Such an arrangement, however, limits the speed with which the apparatus can process potatoes since approximately half of the plunger's motion is wasted. The plunger itself contributes to the complexity of this system since its periphery must be configured with grooves to permit the plunger to pass by the fingers in the chute without pushing the fingers to their retracted positions.
The present invention overcomes the above noted drawbacks of the prior art and provides a simple apparatus for processing large numbers of potatoes into helical strips quickly and efficiently. The invention overcomes the problem of holding the potato against rotation by adopting a means known to certain fields of the food processing art but never before applied to the production of helical fries, namely feed rollers. Such feed rollers comprise pairs of counter-rotating shafts with engagement spurs or paddles thereon for passing elongated food items along an axis extending therebetween. These devices are used, for example, in the SC-120 Corn Cutter marketed by FMC Corp. to feed cob corn to a cutting assembly. The FMC device is described in detail in U.S. Pat. No. 2,787,273.
In the apparatus of the invention, potatoes are provided to the feed rollers from a conveyor which is supplied with potatoes at its intake end from a trough shaker or other singulator device. Potatoes on the conveyor are aligned longitudinally and are then impaled on small spikes protruding from the conveyor so that they maintain that orientation during their travel to the feed roller portion of the system. The feed rollers firmly grip the potatoes by their peripheries and advance them into the rotary cutting assembly. This assembly comprises a helically shaped cutting member defining a slicing blade at a leading edge thereof and supporting a plurality of perpendicularly extending scoring blades on its front surface. The helically shaped cutting member is mounted at its periphery by being threadedly received in a helical thread cut in an annular holder. This holder, in turn, is affixed to a toothed drive ring which is rotatably mounted in a cutting assembly housing. This composite assembly is removably mounted in the apparatus and the toothed drive ring driven by a drive gear that extends through an opening in the housing. The apparatus includes features designed to minimize stresses in the cutting of the potatoes that may impair the structural integrity of the resulting helical strips.
These and other objects, features and advantages of the present invention will be more readily apparent from the following detailed description, which proceeds with reference to the accompanying drawings.